Developer pushes ahead on Midtown residential building

1of4﻿PM Realty Group is planning residential and retail development along the Main Street rail line﻿. ﻿Photo: Cody Duty, Staff

2of4A building is seen in the 3300 block of Main Street, Monday, Sept. 28, 2015, in Houston. PM Realty Group has filed plans with the city to develop a residential building there. (Cody Duty / Houston Chronicle)Photo: Cody Duty, Staff

3of4A building is seen in the 3300 block of Main Street, Monday, Sept. 28, 2015, in Houston. PM Realty Group has filed plans with the city to develop a residential building there. (Cody Duty / Houston Chronicle)Photo: Cody Duty, Staff

4of4A building is seen in the 3300 block of Main Street, Monday, Sept. 28, 2015, in Houston. PM Realty Group has filed plans with the city to develop a residential building there. (Cody Duty / Houston Chronicle)Photo: Cody Duty, Staff

Another developer is joining the growing crowd of builders adding new housing, shops and offices to Midtown, the lively urban neighborhood just south of downtown.

Houston-based PM Realty Group is expected to close later this year on a property along Main Street's light rail line where it is planning a residential and retail development.

The developer has hired architecture firm RTKL to design the project, but said it is still creating the vision and scope for it.

"What interests us in the site is everything that's going on down there," said Roger Gregory, president of investments for PM Realty Group.

The property at 3300 Main is next to the new Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston, also known as MATCH, a performing arts space for local theater and arts groups.

Directly south of MATCH is Mid Main, a mixed-use development that will include apartments, shops, restaurants and a parking garage that was funded through increases in Midtown sales taxes.

Another nearby project, long known as the Superblock, will include an urban park, high-end apartments, an underground parking garage, a concert pavilion and shops. It has both public and private backing. A development with Whole Foods was recently announced for a site several blocks away.

There's been so much new development in Midtown that experts say it should be considered along with downtown as Houston's new "urban epicenter," according to a recent report from Stream Realty, a commercial real estate firm.

Midtown's median household income and its education levels have been rising and are higher than Houston as a whole.

Some 1,500 new multifamily units are under development and three office buildings, including a renovation, are in the works or proposed, Stream research shows.

PM Realty's proposed project near the Houston Community College rail station will join more established Midtown destinations like the Continental Club and the Ensemble Theatre.

The new development would replace an old city-owned building now on the site. The Midtown Redevelopment Authority owns the 1.16-acre property and PM Realty Group has been under contract on the site since at least late last year.

The Midtown Redevelopment Authority, which oversees the area's tax increment reinvestment zone where revenues from increased property values are used for public improvements, bought the building from the city for $5 million in 2011.

A spokeswoman for the authority said the building sale is expected to close in November but would not provide additional information.

Documents recently submitted to the city for the new residential project refer to it as "high-rise apartments."

Gregory said size of the building has not yet determined, nor has a construction schedule.

"This is a project that's ultimately going to deliver multiple years from now," he said.

RTKL, the architect involved with the project also designed another new PM Realty building, the ultra-upscale 2929 Weslayan near River Oaks. Gregory said the Midtown building will not be as high-end.

He expects the project to be completed when the economy is in better shape. With many developers now pulling back amid the fallout in the energy industry, "we definitely believe bringing a product to market in the next couple of years is a good time," Gregory said.

Nancy Sarnoff covers commercial and residential real estate for the Houston Chronicle and the paper’s two websites: Chron.com and HoustonChronicle.com. She also hosts Looped In, a weekly real estate podcast about the city’s most compelling people and places. Nancy is a native of Chicago but has spent most of her life in Texas.